Apparatuses have heretofore been developed for mounting dry cell battery powered flashlights to bicycles in various manners. For example, some mounting devices have been developed for mounting flashlights to bicycles to provide oscillatory types of safety lamps. Exemplary of these are those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,788,763 and 2,811,633. Apparatuses have also been developed for mounting flashlights to the rears of bicycles to provide taillights. U.S. Pat. No. 2,728,824 explifies these types of mounts. Still other apparatuses have been devised for mounting flashlights to bicycles to provide headlights as exemplified by those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,449,509 and 4,170,337. The present invention specifically relates to the last mentioned type of mounting devices.
The prior art apparatuses used in mounting bicycle headlights have had a number of deficiencies. For example, being secured as with nuts and bolts to the bicycles, they have required the use of tools such as pliers to mount them. In addition, those to which flashlights are not permanently mounted, like that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,170,337, have also required the manipulation of other fastening means, such as wing nuts and the like, to mount the flashlights securely to the mounts once the mounts themselves have been mounted, and to dismount the flashlights from the mounts. Thus, even when the flashlights are dismounted the mounts typically remain on the bicycles. Not only are such naked mounts unsightly but they provide dead weight.
The stability of the prior art mounting apparatuses has also been lacking. Once mounted the flashlights have often not been located along a fore and aft axis of the bicycle, being in the plane in which the bike wheels lie when mutually aligned. With the advent of modern light-weight, high-speed bicycles the mounting of relatively heavy flashlights, fully loaded with batteries, off of their fore and aft axes has provided an adverse imbalance that is clearly discernable by discriminating riders. In addition to being off-axis they have also been mounted at some distance from the axes of the upright front wheel steering stems thereby creating moments of inertia about the stem axes each time the bicycles strike bumps or depressions in the roadway. This has tended to loosen the flashlights from their mounts as well as the mounts from the bicycles.
In addition to the foregoing, the flashlight mounting apparatuses of the prior art have not possessed the capability of enabling a rider to alter flashlight tilt readily while riding so as to effect changes in beam angle. Some of the devices have also been lacking in versatility with regard to their ability to mount flashlights of different shapes and sizes without having to interchange mount parts. Still others have also had a tendency to scratch or mar the bicycles. Accordingly, it is to the provision of apparatuses and methods of mounting flashlights to bicycles which overcome these deficiencies of the prior art to which the present invention is primarily directed.